MORE THAN JUST MUSIC

By: By Marc Loftus

The production music business has a lot going on these days, and much of it has little to do with creating great sounding tracks. Delivery is a major issue pressing production music houses, which, in recent years, have been providing their releases on the CD format.

And while CDs are a convenient and inexpensive delivery format, many studio owners will agree that a subscription to a production music library will soon inundate them with more discs than you can shake a stick at. With regular updates, these libraries can soon take up considerable real estate.

So how are libraries responding? The Web is an easy answer, but not necessarily a simple solution when considering issues such as search functionality and the ability to deliver both preview- and production-quality elements.

Dittybase, an online resource based in British Columbia, has been perfecting online production music delivery since 1999, and after talking with VP of product management Mike Knutsen, you'd get the impression: "Problem solved."

Dittybase has over 20,000 tracks available online and adds approximately 10 new titles each month. The online library includes most of the major production music libraries, as well as titles from numerous smaller collections.

To keep things simple, Dittybase has one rate card covering all libraries. Non-exclusive arrangements allow library providers to offer music through their own Web sites in addition to Dittybase's. Essentially, they've got nothing to lose. Visitors can sample 40k/sec. low-quality MP3 files and later download uncompressed .wav or 192k MP3 files for their production.

Knutsen says Dittybase has several pros come in and listen to libraries, categorizing them based on the company's own standards. This has helped to create a uniform search database, as the various libraries have all been reviewed and tagged by a common panel. A new browsing filter helps visitors find only the releases that have been added since their last visit. A visit to www.dittybase.com will show you just how easy it's become.

Is your studio thinking about releasing a library? Leigh Roberts of JECO Music penned a business piece for the Post Web site this month detailing how a studio can "maximize the use of their musical assets."

And for more on the latest trends taking place in production music, see our feature in this issue.